where the eye persists in seeing
by Nagia
Summary: In Horizon's main colony - precious close to Sanctuary - is a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside. Shepard/Garrus, implied Kaidan/Shepard
1. the quarter inch

If I know you at all (and I don't, but I pride myself on being able to judge what a reader wants), you read that summary and knew how you wanted this story to end. When you clicked that link, you had a damn good idea of what you wanted to see.

I did too. I knew what just about anybody would want to see from the moment I realized I was going to write this little experiment. But I also knew that I probably wasn't going to be able to give any of us that.

I wish I'd been able to put down the book.

Pretty soon, you're going to wish Shepard had walked away from that house.

And it's not because of what happens. It's not because of how this is all going to end.

The thing about this story that scares us is not the smell you just noticed (don't sniff), or whether the walls are different than they were a minute ago (don't look). It's not the thing standing right behind you, waiting for you to turn around and acknowledge it so it can crawl inside and change you. It's not the quarter inch, or the cold, or the growl, or even Shepard and Garrus and Kaidan trapped in a place that confronts us with the darkest thing inside ourselves.

It's the emptiness. As we watch someone else confront that dark mirror, we, too are drawn to the edge. And then in past the edge. And as we desperately try not to look, we finally realize that there is no reflection.

There is no monster lurking underneath that water that is not lurking in you.

You have a choice. You can keep reading (even if this version isn't as pretty as the one you'll find on the AO3), or you can do the smart thing and click that little arrow, upper left, pointing backward. If you do, you can pretend that Shepard and Garrus and Kaidan passed that prefab by.

And maybe you'll be luckier than I was. Maybe if you get out now, you won't see what I see.

Without further ado, please allow me to present

* * *

><p><em>the dark line where the eye persists in seeing something that was never there to begin with<em>

1/4 inch

* * *

><p><em>this isn't for you<em>

The main colony on Horizon was empty and silent. Worse even than it had looked after the Collector attack. This time there were no frozen colonists. The GARDIAN was a smoking ruin.

But what really caught Shepard's attention was the haphazard growth. Someone had re-colonized to replace the families and workforce they'd lost. But the new houses looked like they'd just been airdropped in by indifferent volus, and the colonists hadn't moved them.

The bizarre new structural designs weren't making her feel any better about the empty colony.

"Strangest arrangement of prefabs I've ever seen." Garrus stopped to stare at one cell-block neighborhood. It might almost have been normal, except one of the buildings was diagonal to the rest, half-dividing a courtyard the way her mother had once cut sandwiches.

Kaidan made a little half-turn to survey the area, his hand not far from his side-arm. "I'm half expecting to find a pair of legs sticking out from under one of these."

"Definitely not in Kansas anymore."

* * *

><p>"—can pull your head out of your ass—"<p>

A woman's voice, just loud enough to be heard. Frustrated, but not truly angry.

Shepard held up a closed fist, the near-universal 'stop' gesture. The echo of footsteps behind her ceased. "What direction did that come from?"

* * *

><p>They found the speaker. An asari with high, sharp cheekbones and no scales or face markings glared at them from a monitor. Her right arm was invisible; she must have recorded the message on her omnitool and left it at the family's terminal.<p>

The woman started with: "Will, if you're watching this, I guess that means you made it out alive." She paused for a smile. It looked calculated, aloof, and yet it seemed wholly sincere.

Until the smile vanished as quickly as it had been pasted up.

"If you can pull your head out of your ass and not go back in there, I'm taking Shala and Dae toSanctuary. Come find us, if you want." The asari's lips curved down in exquisitely distant sadness. "If you can make yourself."

The monitor blinked on and off, then reappeared. "Will, if you're watching this..."

Kaidan tapped a key on the terminal. The asari's image winked out of existence and didn't return. He watched the space where she'd been for a moment. "Go back in where, I wonder."

"Maybe Cerberus had a secondary lab in Horizon?" It made as much sense as anything else.

"Must be," said Garrus, with something like reluctant awe curving in his second voice. "Who else could drive people this crazy?"

He pointed at the walls.

Straight black lines — too straight and even for organic hands to have painted — scored every wall. Someone had stencilled in numbers above the lines, at regular intervals.

Too regular. Shepard stared. "Did they turn this place into a ruler?"

Kaidan took a step toward the markings. "I've heard of measuring your kid's growth on the walls, but this...?"

"Could they be measuring distance from a certain point? The place the asari was talking about?"

"That'd make sense," Garrus said. "But I get the feeling they were measuring the distance from one wall to another."

Cerberus could drive the most grounded, psychologically normal people up the damn _walls_. Throw in the stress of the Reaper invasion, and Shepard was mildly surprised those measurements on the walls weren't written in blood.

She made her decision. "Right. If it is Cerberus, there could be something we can use here. Let's search."

Every room in the house had the measurements on the wall. They passed through a children's bedroom, a master bedroom, and some kind of study.

In the study they found two terminals, several camera drones, and a desk piled high with datapads and OSDs. Someone had used the corner to bookend a shelf, but the shelf's contents had toppled somehow.

Shepard played the recording on the datapad at the bottom of the stack.

There was silence for a moment that seemed to stretch, and then a man's voice said, "A quarter inch. I've measured five times and it won't go away."


	2. despite the amazements of chemicals cont

Re: where the eye persists in seeing  
>(Anonymous)<br>2012-03-31 11:53 pm (UTC)  
>For the love of all that's holy (or, well, not, actually): KEEP GOING.<p>

You're freaking me the fuck out, and I like it.

SUBJ: despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow  
>(Anonymous)<br>2012-04-01 11:14 pm (UTC)

_I'm_ freaking you out? You know what's freaky? The point right behind your head. Don't look. Keep your eyes on me, the screen, the words. Keep your eyes on the masculine rational; don't listen to the feminine mythical telling you that there is something behind you and you can't see it. If you just keep your eyes forward, it can't touch you, can it? Can't breathe along the back of your neck, ruffling your hair, can't slither into your brain, following your fear, and_change_you.

It's not me you should be afraid of. It's not my words. It's yourself, and your own brain's infinite ability to fuck with itself.

* * *

><p><em>the dark line where the eye persists in seeing something that was never there to begin with<em>

despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow

* * *

><p>In reply, someone made an amused sound, a graceful, low-in-the-throat sort of snort. Then the voice of the asari from the living room terminal asked: "Why does it bother you so much, Will?"<p>

The man gave a wracking, bone-deep cough. It seemed almost endless, and then he had to hack to clear his throat a few times before he could say, "Messes with the camera drones."

He sounded tired, and like his voice had somehow rusted over during the time he spent coughing.

"Please. Their programming lets them adjust to little things like this."

"Not without using more processing power. Means I have to recharge 'em sooner, and the pictures never come out like I planned." He paused again for the thick cough, sounding almost like a drowning man retching up water, and added, "I want the girls to remember this. The good times. I just... It's a hard world, Kerre. I want the good times to last."

"You idiot," said Kerre, voice wet too.

Shepard put the datapad back down and looked at the camera drones, and the terminals, and the OSDs. A professional photographer? An obsessive? Or a short-lived father of asari children, trying to make the best memories he could, and give his girls a way to keep them? A way to preserve, prolong, _stretch_the good times out, so his girls could have him when they needed him, even if he could no longer answer?

She could be angry about the state of the galaxy whenver she wanted.

But it was always the tiny, private stories like this that made her ache at what Cerberus had done yesteryear, at what the Reapers were doing now, at what someone else would surely be doing tomorrow.

Kaidan picked up the next datapad and pressed play.

Will said, sounding just as exhausted and rusty as before, with an addition of fury: "As if the quarter inch wasn't enough, now the damned place is just making _fun_ of me, Restahn."

An accented voice, unmistakably quarian, asked: "What's the house of mysteries doing to you now?"

"I've got a new goddamn basement! Hell, it's not even a basement, because I'd need _stairs_ for one of those! My damn back door shouldn't open on anything, but it opens up on some kind of... I don't even know what the hell it is."

Kaidan hit the stop button as Will coughed again.

"Sounds like he was hallucinating," Garrus said. "I know Cerberus thinks driving bystanders crazy is a great way to pass the time, but is this their MO?"

"If he married an asari and brought her and their children to a human colony... they might have targeted him just out of spite." This from Kaidan, who set the datapad back on the desk and eyed the rest like they were contagious.

Shepard didn't bother trying to explain that Garrus was right, that this didn't feel like their style. Kaidan thought what he thought about Cerberus. He hadn't had the exposure to know that if Cerberus wanted, it would have simply experimented on him — Sanctuary wasn't far, after all — and she was honestly glad of that.

Instead, she said, "Alright, the data pads probably won't get us anywhere. Let's check the kitchen."

So they left the study behind and headed to the kitchen. The curtains above the sink were perfectly still; pale yellow checked with white contrasted with the stark black marks covering the walls. Until she realized all she saw through the window was the gray wall of another prefab. Someone had left out tubes of nutrient paste, neatly labelled. Every dish had been washed and put away.

And there was a back door that should have opened — if it opened at all — onto the back wall of the next prefab over.

Garrus tapped the interface. The door hissed open onto a dark space. Not quite black, but almost.

Shepard looked out the kitchen window, but saw only the other prefab.

"Stay here," she said, jogging easily back toward the front door. She circled around the house and into the other prefab.

But there was no corresponding door, nor any sign of a hollow way at all.


	3. mea culpa mea maxima culpa

Re: despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow

(Anonymous)

No, you know what's really freaky? READING THIS WHILE I AM IN THE HOUSE ALONE THANK YOU ALL TO HELL, MY FRIEND.

(Also, you're quite welcome, and part three definitely fulfills the promise of the first two...except now I am so nervous because you've split them up...)

—anon, chewing her nails

* * *

><p>Re: despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow<p>

(Anonymous)

"Them" of course being our intrepid protagonists; damn unclear antecedents. _Mea culpa._

* * *

><p>SUBJ: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa<p>

(Anonymous)

I think maybe you should see this [link redacted; see below for contents]

Now look back up at your original comment.

There was a theory that when the house changes, it's reacting to perceptions of the people inside it. Essentially, it reacts to their reactions, and you get an eternal feedback loop of expectations and mood influencing the surroundings, which in turn influence expectation and mood. Ad nauseum.

(Oh, and if you've looked "up," then have you looked behind you yet?)

* * *

><p><em>the dark line where the eye persists in seeing something that was never there to begin with<em>

mea culpa mea maxima culpa

* * *

><p>I think we're in the perfect spot to take a break from Shepard. I promise I won't do this often. (That's a promise I'll probably break, but I'll try, okay?)<p>

Now, I want you to focus on the words (ignore the margins, ignore the smell, ignore what's behind you) and imagine.

Just imagine: Shepard leaves to check and see if there's some kind of weird Cerberus secret passage. And you're stuck with just one teammate for backup, with Shepard on the other side of the Wall That Physics Forgot; you and Shepard are divided by your own private five and a half-minute hallway.

While you're waiting, one of the shelves breaks or something, and a book or something smacks the key on the living room terminal and there's Kerre again talking about _if you're watching this_, she guesses _you made it out alive_.

Your HUD flickers out. Completely. No blue dots, no red dots, just endless grid and the little light-up it does while it sweeps for heat sources and link-ups to the Normandy.

So you tap your visor (or your helmet) and make a crack about something needing calibrated, and that's when you realize you haven't heard from Joker or Cortez since you hit dirt. And Shepard hasn't checked in to tell you what's on the other side of that ungodly wall.

Maybe percussive maintainance actually works, or maybe you're just that unlucky. Regardless, your HUD goes frantic. One red dot, and another, and another, and another, going on until you squint and realize they're not dots. They're those thick blocks that mean "Atlas" or "Harvester". Huge heat signatures with no matching Normandy IFF.

The HUD does one last sweep. It corrects itself: you're not surrounded by multiple enemies. You're standing in a red zone. As in, the ground under your feet, the roof over your head, the walls around you all register as one hostile entity.

All you get when you try to raise Shepard is weird distorted noises. Like echoes, if you bounced echoes off the Normandy's comm system. Or maybe a growl.


End file.
